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Wouldn't Satoshi have spent at least some Bitcoins? Testing the system, or encouraging early economic activity? Although maybe this entity represents just one

• oleganza 14y ago
  The first transaction was to Hal Finney, as a test. But if he tries to buy something pointing to his physical address, it would help a lot revealing his identity. Even buying drugs on Silk Road, since they are delivered by mail to your door.
  • gwern 14y ago
    Satoshi seems to have been offering bitcoins to play with to a lot of people early on; a hacker of my acquaintance mentioned sending Satoshi 'hate mail' (he was annoyed by Satoshi contributing to the babel of half-baked P2P networks at the time) and Satoshi replied with some links explaining Bitcoin and an offer of some coins to try out. So false alarms are perfectly possible in tracking early bitcoins' movements.